


Penance

by Critter_Cantrip



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Speculative Backstory, Spoilers s02e018, Suicidal Ideation, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 23:24:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Critter_Cantrip/pseuds/Critter_Cantrip
Summary: Someone healed Caleb in the asylum. How unfortunate he has no idea who.





	Penance

**Author's Note:**

> This is me placing my bet here and now. No frickin' way a random person healed Caleb. Major NPC or bust.

“Cariel.” She knelt in front of the shivering man. His eyes flitted from the walls to her face and straight again to the floor. She tried once more.

“Cariel, do you see me? Do you remember?”

She wanted to rip the bars from the door, wanted to scream. None of that would help him. She hadn’t anticipated he would actually be mad.

It had been years before she’d discovered that Cariel still lived. More time than that to track down what isolated prison he’d been shoved into.It wasn’t that he was mistreated, precisely.The room was surprising clean and oddly, entirely, barren. There was not a bed or bedpan. Not even a blanket. Cariel huddled in a corner on the hard tile floor.

She’d glanced at his chart to find the room. You don’t leave someone so prone to suicide attempts much to work with.Not when someone as powerful as Trent was paying you to keep the patient alive.

“Why did you care? Why do any of this?” she said to herself as she gingerly reached out and brushed a bit of the overgrown hair out of his eyes.He pulled back from her and whimpered. His mouth formed half syllables before skipping to the next unfinished word.

A month’s time to earn a position on the staff. Another painful month to build up the knowledge and trust to gain access to the more secure of the patients. The timing had been excellent. After the last bit of activity against the Empire they had all needed to disappear.

Still. Was there anything left of the man she had fallen in love with so many years ago?

Astrid took a deep breath, set her hands on Cariel’s head, and spoke the incantation she had learned. Something went sideways in her mind. Skittered and slinked and latched onto her psyche. She began screaming.

Fire. So much fire.

“PULL THEM OUT,” Cariel’s voice. Screaming. Pleading, being held in place by their Master. Astrid saw herself look away, saw the other boy sneer.

The smell. She could never forget the smell. Embers everywhere in the air, the screams stopping. Throwing herself at the mental barriers over and over and over and over and oh Gods, it never ends. It never ends.

She blinked. She was at Astrid’s house. Astrid saw her parents cough and choke and slump in their chairs. Felt the keen satisfaction of knowing they were doing the Empire a great service. Knew it in his bones.

She blinked. “PULL THEM OUT.” Cariel’s voice. Screaming. Pleading. Blinked.

Astrid fought against the rising tide of madness. She reached out blindly, sobbing, reaching for some fragment of Cariel that was like the boy she had loved before Trent’s corruption. Found -- something. Something that wasn’t quite sane but saner.

Blinked. “I have to undo this. I have to undo this. I have to undo th--“ Blinked. It was enough. Not just pain and betrayal and self-loathing. Something to live for rather than die for.

Astrid felt bits of herself slip in and out of Cariel as she wove together as many shreds of the tattered tapestry of his mind as she could manage. This hadn’t been the plan. The plan was simple. Break in, find Cariel, get him out, escape. Cariel wasn’t supposed to be actually mad. With a final twist she blurred his memory of her into something she hoped he could forgive. One of them should live through this. With a final gasp she kissed him on the cheek and let go. She blinked.

Her mother was choking, her father started coughing blood. She wanted to recoil from the table with a scream but instead watched them die with a smirk. Blinked. Blinked.Blinked.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Someone I know asked why I picked Cariel as Caleb's name of birth. In last weeks' Talk Machine Liam mentioned that he was not aware that the name Caleb means 'loyal dog' when he chose the name and it was coincidence. 
> 
> I wanted a German boy's name with a C and found Cariel which was the right length and general feel for me and then read that the translation meant 'free man'. Oh. Yeah. Irony. I can work with that.


End file.
